AWAKE: A Memoir, by Jen Hatmaker
Waking up is something the body does on its own, the conscious mind catching up only afterward. So it is both metaphorically appropriate and unexpectedly moving to discover that “Awake,” Jen Hatmaker’s lucent and nervy memoir of life after a very public split from her pastor husband in 2020, is not really about divorce. It is about something much bigger, more universal.
That’s not to say the details aren’t told. “Awake” opens with Hatmaker overhearing her husband dictating an illicit text message in the dead of night, an act that cracked their marriage and their family wide open.
But if “Awake” exists because she suddenly found herself in unwanted middle-aged singleness, its aims are broader. The book is a full-throated praise song to the body: its wisdom, its patience, its trustworthiness, even when society and religion say the opposite.
Hatmaker knows some readers are mainly here for the dirt. Both she and her now ex-husband were well-known authors and speakers on the evangelical circuit, and four of her 14 books have made the New York Times best-seller list; she taught women about the Bible and living a free, grace-filled life in a world of rules.
The collapse of their marriage set off shock waves of speculation and often specious internet snark, sharpened by previous controversies: In 2016, Hatmaker had begun speaking publicly about systemic racism and her support for L.G.B.T.Q. people, positions that got her dropped by her publisher, banned from Christian bookstores and targeted or ostracized by former fans, predominantly white evangelical women.
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The post She Modeled Her Whole Life on Godly Purity. Then She Woke Up. appeared first on New York Times.
